Few stories here have been as entertaining to cover from a financial skullduggery aspect as the saga of Platinum Studios, a long running con game of a company that cheated a bunch of creators out of their creations while coasting on the success of the first Men in Black film, which it had published in comics form. Founded in 1997, it developed a ton of comics for years without publishing anything while hoping for salvation from the Cowboys and Aliens. I wrote a long history of the company’s bizarre penny stock antics here but the short version is that this business plan never works:

Step 1: buy any comics IP lying around in hopes of making a movie
Step 2: ??
Step 3: Profit!

Anyway, the epicenter—if you call a dozen messages a month an epicenter—of all things Platinum these days is the stock message board, where someone glommed on to the fact that a stock holding company KCG Holdings (NYSE: KCG), a subsidiary ofKCG America, LLC, is buying a lot of stock in the company, a lot meaning 27 million shares. KCG itself is a well established stock trading company of some kind, although just last year it had to make a $12 million settlement for playing a little too fast and loose with money at one point. A fitting partner for Platinum then!

KCG’s interest was revealed in a February 14th filing, as apparently the SEC requires a company to report when they have purchased more than 5% of another company.

Does this mean anything? Is there even anything left of Platinum to take over? Once it claimed to own 5000 properties, but few of them had much of a fanbase, to put it mildly. Since the board drama of a year ago—Platinum’s new president tried to oust owner Scott Mitchell Rosenberg only to have Rosenberg fire him and an investor’s meeting turn into a disaster—the only news of the company was a sale of its storage units last summer. The penny stock was last worth a penny in 2011, it hasn’t tweeted since September 2012, or made any SEC filings since about the same time.

And what of Scott Mitchell Rosenberg, the legendary mastermind behind Platinum, Cowboys and Aliens and a plethora of shell companies to keep everything tucked away? He seems to have dropped out of sight as far as Platinum goes, although he’s been backing some stuff on Kickstarter according to his Facebook page.

Rosenberg also published Malibu Comics, which, as we’ve been often told by Tom Brevoort and Axel Alonso, will never ever be revived at Marvel despite Marvel having bought the company back in 1994 (20 years ago!!!). No one knows exactly why this is, as an NDA is involved, although there is some speculation by informed parties if you scroll down in this post. I’m guessing it has something to do with Rosenberg.

So yeah, all that struggle for…nothing. It seems the sad, crazy story of Platinum may finally have faded away to dust.

Heidi MacDonald is the founder and editor in chief of The Beat. In the past, she worked for Disney, DC Comics, Fox and Publishers Weekly. She can be heard regularly on the More To Come Podcast. She likes coffee, cats and noble struggle.

Related

Comments

Interesting update, Heidi. I’ve been wondering where all that was heading.

A minor note: Malibu published Men In Black, so it’s not tied in any way to Platinum.

I don’t have any insider knowledge about why Marvel won’t revive the Malibu properties–so my own Platinum NDA doesn’t apply–but I’ve spoken with a number of people over the years, since leaving Platinum, and the best guess (at least I think it’s the best guess) is that Marvel won’t revive the Malibu properties because there’s outside profit participation tied to their use, profit participation Marvel doesn’t want to pay.

Also, for those coming late to the party, even though Platinum did not publish most of what they had in development (it still breaks my heart), they did finally publish a number of titles.

There are several that deserve to be remembered, because they fit the original concept of Platinum’s publishing program, which was to support the independent comics creator vision.

I worked on hundreds of properties, most of which never got published. There were a lot of titles published after I left that I had nothing to do with. But I recommend to even the discerning reader the following titles:

In the link in Heidi’s post there’s a comment from Tom Mason saying the creator-participation deals weren’t out of the ordinary with anything other companies offer, and that they deal with things like movie rights, not individual issues.

Hi Bob — Men In Black was published by Malibu Comics under the company’s Aircel imprint. It was originally a creator-owned comic from writer Lowell Cunningham. I posted about the history of MIB here: http://goo.gl/b13NQK You have to scroll down a bit to get to my comment.

Then everyone would be wrong Snikt Snakt. Marvel bought Malibu to keep it out of the hands of DC and to preserve Marvel’s marketshare. It had nothing to do with the coloring department. Read the story at the link here and scroll to comments #13 and #14. http://goo.gl/ThVp4B

This is sad. I’ve had brushes with 2 different people claiming to represent Platinum and feel I escaped relatively unscathed. (Also, someone claiming to represent MTV. But that’s another story).

As a fan and as a, well, human being, it’s depressing to see people prey on artists dreams like this. I know they will say “it’s just business”. Except for the lying. Comics people grow up on a diet of characters that don’t misrepresent themselves. The heroes are the heroes and the villains are the villains. You know who will try to take you. Not so in hollywierd.

@Bob: I don’t believe there’s an official claim, but a blurry claim to bolster Platinum’s credibility. When Scott Rosenberg was at Malibu Comics, he helped broker the deal for the Men In Black movie and while never a producer on the film or credited in any way, he’s used that association to his PR advantage. Men In Black was published by Mailbu Comics, Scott Rosenberg owned Malibu Comics, the movie became a big franchise, now Scott Rosenberg owns Platinum. Could lightning strike twice? It’s fuzzy business puffery.